Not the right time

Today, Sunday 15th March, 2020 I am starting my first ever blog with this post. Not the right moment, I know.

Spain is in a state of alarm, meaning we citizens should stay at home at all times except to buy groceries, go to the doctor and such. Schools are, of course, closed. COVID-19 has supposed, as in almost every country in the world, a huge disruption to education and life in general.

And last Friday I was promoted! I am now the coordinator of innovation at my college, CPA Salduie. Not that I was to be promoted this early in the year and, well, the plan was I was going to be in charge of a new PBL project we have been working on  for the last months. We were NOT expecting this. At least this early. Not the right time to start a blog, is it?

But yet, I have been feeling the need to tell what is going on around me and in my head for the last few months and I promised myself that if I ever was promoted and in charge of innovation, I would start a blog to tell how this works, at least for me. I just want to write about tech, innovation, SDGs, PBL and such things and how we can manage to make our school a better place (if so).

And then, last January I attended Bett Show 2020 and the Google Innovators Energiser, which took place at Google Headquarters in London. Then I had the privilege to meet and work with many talented innovators and I met a legend, Adam Hill (follow him on Twitter, please). Adam is the author of a fantastic Blog, Mr Hill’s Musings (subscribe!!) which I avidly read and the one who made me realise I need to write this blog. The idea of documenting a journey is quite powerful and I am starting a journey right now.

Not the right journey, mind you. The real one was supposed to be a normal one (normal meaning at school, with students around, teachers complaining… the whole lot), a tough but rewarding journey to implement PBL, SDGs and other acronyms, once and for all, as the main pedagogic strategy at my place.

But I guess this is the journey I won in the lottery of teaching and viruses. Next Monday (OMG, that is tomorrow!!!) we are starting, as any other school in Spain and many other countries, a new stage, in which distance learning does not only sound well but is absolutely necessary.

Good news is we are not new in online teaching at CPA and we know one thing or two about G Suite for Education, which gives us a nice solid starting point to try and do things more or less right. We have been working really hard since last Friday to create a new online system to be able to keep on teaching our students, at least, well.

But the plans, the ideas and the tools will be commented in my second post (will write it as soon as I can, promise), I want to finish now with a final thought: we can do it! The point is I have been surrounded by wonderful people these last three days. IT guys sweating to give support, fellow teachers bringing coffee and encouragement, students (who are, by the way, deprived of internships, Erasmus+ projects and more) saying goodbye with a smile and managers who work as hard as anyone and keep the energy going.

That is the way.

Just one last thing (sorry). My posts will come in twos. I will write in Spanish and English, sometimes about the same topic (like today) and sometimes about different ones. Hope you enjoy both!